Aradhana Misra Mona, the new chief of the Congress party in Uttar Pradesh, ran into her first challenge on her first day at work when supporters of the outgoing chief began fighting with those who are loyal to her.
Mamta Choudhary, the chief of the party’s Madhya Pradesh women’s wing, also came under verbal attack while attending the event to install the new UP Congress chief. Amid the shouts, Congress leaders including Mona’s father Pramod Tiwari, who is a Rajya Sabha MP, and Imran Masood, the party’s working president in UP, tried to placate both sides. “There is nothing much for me to say. The leadership change in the UP Congress in which Rai, a Bhumihaar, was replaced by Mona, a Brahmin, has led to speculation that the party aimed to ensure the alliance deal with the Samajwadi Party went through smoothly.
Mona faces an uphill task for the UP assembly elections in 2027, as the party has been out of power in UP since 1989. In the 2022 assembly elections, the Congress won only two of the 403 seats in the state, failing to win from Amethi and Raebareli that at one point were seen to be their strongholds.
“We are feeling very disheartened,” Choudhary said. I am an ordinary party cadre who will continue to put in my best for the party,” he said, adding he she would take the party to “new heights.
It began when supporters of Congress leader Ajay Rai, who Mona replaced, began raising slogans against her during the event to mark her ascension.
